Generally, a tension-free repair of surgery has been widely used for the hernia repair, because it has a low relapse rate and a short operation time, and a short wound recovery time for the patient to return to daily life. The mesh used for hernia repair must maintain chemical and physical properties in several years to strengthen the peritoneum, and thus filaments prepared from unabsorbable polymer such as polypropylene, polyethyleneterephthalate, and the like have been widely used as its material.
As fibrous tissues are excessively generated or bloods are run out and coagulated in the recovery course of wounds in inflammation, gash, friction, surgery cuts, etc., the surrounding organs or tissues being separated from each other adhere together, and so adhesion occurs. The wound caused by surgery adheres to the other tissue adjacent to surgical region to induce pain, intestinal obstruction, adhesion and the like. Occasionally, the re-surgery needs to separate the adhered part.
As the methods for preventing the adhesion, the anti-adhesion agent in solution, gel, film and the like is inserted during the surgery. The material useful for the anti-adhesion agent can be a material functioning as a barrier during the wound healing and then being degraded, has no toxicity, and does not produce the toxic degraded products. The examples of materials used for the anti-adhesion agent include expanded poly tetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE), poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) and etc. as a unabsorbable material; and the natural polymers derived from a living body such as polysaccharides and proteins, and the un-natural polymers, soluble synthetic polymer and the like. The materials for anti-adhesion agent can be used alone, or in combination with other polymers in the chemically-bound form, film, or sheet.
The mesh composite products having an anti-adhesion property and the mesh basic function have been developed as the surgical mesh for heniotomy. Among the mesh composite products, there is a knitted mesh of polypropylene monofilament which are adhered by oxidized regenerated cellulose (ORC), unabsorbable material of silicone elastomer or ePTFE. The fabric prepared by ORC has been known to have a good adhesion to the winding organ or tissue, but has no biocompatibility due to an artificial polymer and a low efficiency of separating membrane, because it can be easily penetrated by cell, blood protein and the like through the large pore. The unabsorbable materials such as ePTFE cannot be degraded biologically, and has a disadvantage of induction of inflammation in the surgical regions.
In addition, there is another type of mesh composite which is prepared by making the knitted fabric of unabsorbable material such as polypropylene and combining it with hydrogel such as hyaluronic acid or CMC hydrogel with an adhesive. The toxic cross-linking agent must be used for preparing the insoluble anti-adhesion layer with hyaluronic acid and CMC, but be removed by complex purification steps. Two-layered mesh composite of polyester/collagen film has been provided. The collagen can cause the immune-rejection and provide animal pathogens and viruses, because it is derived from animal. Other two-layered mesh composite is prepared by performing the electrical spinning for heparin to obtain a heparin web and for PLGA copolymer on the heparin web. The remaining amount of organic solvent required for the electrical spinning cannot be controlled easily and the web has a low physical strength and productivity.
The mesh composite used for the hernia repair surgery needs high surgical convenience, alleviation of the patient's irritation feeling, and biocompatibility. Because the mesh composite has a multi-layered structure largely, it requires flexibility. The unabsorbable polymer used for anti-adhesion agent can be a cause of re-adhesion as time goes on, and the absorbable polymer can induce the inflammation in the absorption process. Accordingly, there is a need for developing mesh composite that can satisfy the requirements of the surgical mesh composite and resolve the problems of the products in related art.